Mike Peel
Joined 17 March 2005
Latest comment: 36 minutes ago by MediaWiki message delivery in topic Tech News: 2026-30
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Tech News: 2026-29
editLatest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Revise Tone helps newcomers identify passages in Wikipedia articles that may contain non-encyclopedic language and encourages them to consider revising the tone. The feature was A/B tested on the Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias, where newcomer task completion rates increased by 38.7% compared to the default Copyedit task, with no decrease in edit quality. The test ended on July 9, and the feature is now available for everyone on these wikis, configurable via Community Configuration. The plan is to release Revise Tone to more wikis.
- The community configuration that allows automatic removal of inactive mentors based on configurable criteria will be enabled on Thursday 16, on some wikis to keep mentor lists up to date. Mentors are experienced contributors who opt in to help new users on-wiki through the Growth Features. Administrators can now prepare the settings via Special:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship; they will take effect starting Thursday.
View all 38 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where some users of the Wikipedia Android app were logged out immediately after signing in, preventing them from staying logged in and editing pages, has now been fixed.
Updates for technical contributors
- Editing a page via user scripts or gadgets was causing watchlist labels that the user had assigned to that page to reset. This has now been fixed.
- To work around a Safari bug (see phab:T425211), on Parsoid-enabled wikis, wikilink hrefs now use absolute urls instead of protocol-relative urls. REST API output remains unchanged and continue to use protocol-relative urls. Gadgets, user scripts, bots, and CSS might need to be adapted if they relied on the presence of protocol-relative urls in wikilink hrefs.
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
In depth
- The Wikimedia Foundation’s Experiment Platform Team has published a blog post reflecting on its first year of structured experimentation. It highlights successful experiments such as Paste Check, Reference Check, and Tone Check, which improved editing outcomes and have been rolled out to more users, as well as experiments that did not lead to product changes. Read more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Wikidata weekly summary #740
edit
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-07-13. Missed the previous one? See issue #739.
week leading up to 2026-07-13. Missed the previous one? See issue #739.
Discussions
- Open request for adminship: GA Kevin - RfP scheduled to end after 14 July 2026 18:40 (UTC)
- New requests for permissions/Bot:
- Nabbot 2 - Task: Translating English descriptions to Turkish using a predefined dictionary mapping.
- AgenticCommonsBot 1 - Task: Add Open Library ID (P648) (OpenLibrary author ID) to items about people, where the OpenLibrary author and Wikidata person are the same individual, when every statement is sourced.
- EquipboardBot - Task: Add Equipboard artist ID (P6912) to Wikidata items for musicians, sourced from Equipboard's own database of public artist identifiers.
- Call for Participation in Improving Constraints
- Just about any aspect of constraints is in scope, from rewriting existing bots to expanding the power of property constraints to adding new kinds of constraint. If you are interested, sign up in WikiProject Property Constraints/improving.
Events
- Upcoming events:
- Wikimania 2026 is fast approaching. Taking place 21 - 25 July in Paris, France. Can't attend? Register for a ticket to the virtual event and watch sessions online.
- Interested in Wikibase Ontology Federation? Join the July 14 call, see the Cleaning Task Force page for more details.
- Previous events:
- The 3rd Quarter Wikidata + Wikibase office hour was held. The transcript is available to read:
Wikidata:Events/Telegram office hour 2026 07 08
- The 3rd Quarter Wikidata + Wikibase office hour was held. The transcript is available to read:
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
- Blogs
- Behind Better Data: Inside Wikidata’s First WikiProjects Days
- Africa Wiki Challenge 2026 in the Ghanaian Pidgin Community: Documenting “Water for Life” Through Wikimedia Projects
- Reflecting on progress and planning ahead: Dagbani Wikimedians User Group holds its last quarter team meeting
- EduWiki Workshop: Combining PETScan and Generative AI for Smarter Wikipedia Editing
- Why Computational Historians need Wikidata - a substack article by Jim Clifford
- Papers
- A Demonstration of WikiRAG: An Evidence-based Link Prediction for Wikidata with Retrieval Augmented Generation - WikiRAG is an interactive framework that combines automated link prediction with retrieval‑augmented generation and human validation to reliably complete knowledge graphs like Wikidata by generating candidate links, retrieving supporting evidence, and enabling users to confirm and export validated triples. By Sabu, et al., (2026)
- Videos
- Using Open Refine by Wikimedia Australia, Paul Duchesne presents "Using OpenRefine" during WikiCon Australia 2026, (National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra).
- Let’s Get Mappy - making maps on Wikimedia platforms by Wikimedia Australia, Alex Lum presents how location (pushpin) maps, locator maps, and interactive "slippy" local maps end up on Wikipedia, and how infoboxes, Wikidata and OpenStreetMap works together to generate them
- (繁體中文/zh-TW) Tutorial on Editing Temple Data for Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons - recording of a workshop (July 5) on Tutorial on Editing Temple Data for Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, held by Wikimedia Taiwan Community and OSM Taiwan.
- Open data tools for cultural heritage 2nd session in the workshop series “Open Data to Strengthen Online Cultural Heritage,” held March 24, 2026, and organized by the National Library of Uruguay (BNU), Wikimedians of Uruguay, Datysoc, and Data Uruguay.
- GLAMs and Citizen Science Encouraging and Enabling Participation - Siobhan Leachman presents "citizen science workflows" (BHL, iNaturalist, Bionomia, Wikidata) to show how GLAM's can empower citizen scientists to reuse their collections.
Tool of the week
- rudof can be used as a command line tool or can be embedded as a library using cargo. It can be used to validate RDF data represented with different syntaxes like Turtle, NTriples, to name a few. As well as RDF data available through SPARQL endpoints like Wikidata
Other Noteworthy Stuff
- A Project Chat discussion on the new Mentorship features. Self-enrollment has been enabled with the following requirements - account age: 365 days, edits: 500.
- There is also a proposal to add an advisory message to new accounts that create multiple items.
Newest properties and property proposals to review
- Newest properties:
- General datatypes: none
- External identifiers: Rakuten TV adult person ID, KBS News topic ID, Rakuten Books author ID, PTS News Network topic ID, Nakamura Kikaku ID, La Grange person ID, Fontaines de Belgique ID, NHK On Demand program ID, 1SCREEN program ID, LUDAP ID, Bianco keyword ID, Architectenregister ID, ClayArena shooter profile ID, Sundsvall Municipality opendata beach ID, Terceiro Tempo Que Fim Levou ID
- New property proposals to review:
- General datatypes:
- relocated from (Object is the original or former {{Q|17334923}} of the permanently relocated {{Q|16222597}})
- OpenType script tag (identifier for a script in OpenType)
- transforms from (this fictional or mythical entity transforms from that form)
- Korean Classification of Administrative Districts (code assigned to an administrative district of South Korea in the Korean Classification of Administrative Districts)
- External identifiers: Anobii book ID, Google Maps Place ID, Viberate Artist ID, Brussels Inventory of Architectural Heritage style ID, Brussels Inventory of Architectural Heritage designer ID, TuneCore Japan artist ID, Deltarune Wiki article ID, INAPP OA author ID, CNR-IRIS ID, AnimeOshi anime ID, Guide Japan Person ID, CD Journal Artist ID, CIDIM Artist ID, Operabook Artist ID, Mizan al-Arab poet ID, Norton Simon Museum object ID, OpenStreetMap data item ID, Identifiant sur le Western Orthodox Wiki, A World Made by Travel person ID, Scent Base notes ID, radio.net IDs, Scent Base perfumer ID
- General datatypes:
You can comment on all open property proposals!
Did you know?
- Query examples: Items only connected to Telugu Wikipedia (source) - change the language code 'te' to make it work with any other Wikipedia
- Schema examples: French historic monument (E269) - With Wikimania taking place in the French Capital, you can use this entity schema if you feel inspired to or expand items on French monuments.
- Newest WikiProjects:
- Project Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf - a Chinese-animated television franchise.
- (Français) Project Orthodox Christianity
- Project SUNY Libraries EMCO
- WikiProject Highlights:
- Project Govdirectory Poland added several new subpages detailing coverage and progress on State, Local Agencies and Marshall's Offices.
- Project Property Constraints added a subpage: Improving - a call for participation, as a result of discussions during WikiProjects Days 2026.
- Newest database reports: Most sitelinked Items (with statements)
Development
- Blazegraph migration: We are continuing to prepare the Query UI, Query Builder, constraint checks, etc for the migration to QLever (phab:T425618)
- Wikidata integration in the Wikimedia projects: We are investigating some Lua modules to find ones responsible for a lot of unnecessary entries in Watchlist and Recent changes on Wikipedia and co (phab:T429366)
- GraphQL: Added support for negation in property value pair filters (phab:T429580)
- REST API: We are working on the first pieces of support for Lexemes: retrieving a full Lexeme (phab:T429332)
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.
Weekly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
- Govdirectory weekly focus country:
- Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!
Listing for discussion of Template:Infobox museum/wikidata
edit
Template:Infobox museum/wikidata, a dependency of this page, has been listed for discussion, which may result in the template being merged or deleted by consensus. You are invited to comment on the proposed action at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 05:28, 15 July 2026 (UTC)
Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #257: Beyond syntactic tables
editThere is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!
In this issue, we discuss syntactic tables and news in Types, we show some community blogposts and tools, we remind you of the Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia events at Wikimania 2026, and we take a look at the latest software developments.
Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive!
We also remind you that in the next weeks these newsletter reminders will be paused, and that they will resume in mid-August.
Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 10:55, 17 July 2026 (UTC)
Listing for discussion of Template:Infobox writer/Wikidata
edit Template:Infobox writer/Wikidata has been listed for discussion, which may result in the template being merged or deleted by consensus. You are invited to comment on the proposed action at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 04:43, 18 July 2026 (UTC)
.jpg) |
An image created by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, File:Oba Ewuare I, Benin Bronzes, Horniman Museum 4 (cropped).jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! Armbrust The Homunculus 21:05, 19 July 2026 (UTC) |
Wikidata weekly summary 741
edit Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata in the
week leading up to 2026-07-20. Missed the previous one? See issue #740.
week leading up to 2026-07-20. Missed the previous one? See issue #740.
Discussions
- New requests for permissions/Bot:
- RupumpedBot - Task/s: When an Item on a Kenyan river has a Swahili label but no English version, this bot will derive an English label and description.
- William Avery Bot 14 - Task/s: Change values of url properties in mainspace that link to http://web.archive.org/ to use the https protocol (requested at Bot requests#Make HTTPS for Wayback Machine recurrent)
Events
- Upcoming events:
- Wikimania is about to begin. Whether you're attending on-site or virtually, plan your sessions so you don't miss any.
- Full program / Wikidata-only program
- Get your virtual ticket
- OpenStreetMap X Wikidata Meetup #91 Aug 10 Time: 19:30-21:00 UTC+8 at Mozilla Community Space Taipei (Q61752245).
- Force11 webinar: Metadata for all with Wikidata will look at three novel applications, WikiCite, the Trans Music Achive and the Pratt Institute. Held online August 26, 13-14:00 UTC. Please register for the access link.
- Wikimania is about to begin. Whether you're attending on-site or virtually, plan your sessions so you don't miss any.
Press, articles, blog posts, videos
- Blogs:
- Calling Wikifunctions for der, die, das
- How to strengthen the public domain with Wikidata
- Altilunium Panoply v26.7.19 : In this latest release, the external Wikidata connection logic has undergone a major architectural overhaul to improve internal trace mapping.
- Videos:
- (Svenska) Strategic inclusion of library data on Wikidata - first recorded at Digikult 2019, with Alicia Fagerving.
- (Français) I’ll explain how Wikidata works! (Livestream recording), User:Lyokoï will introduce Wikidata and its concepts and the fundamentals of editing.
- (繁體中文/zh-TW) Wikivoyage Guidelines for editing Temple information
- How to use Wikibase for Mixed Methods Research, with Francesco Bailo. Recorded at SICSS Melbourne 2026 (Summer Institute in Computational Social Science).
- Games: Webwoven - a new game has surfaced, powered by Wikidata. Race from start to finish in as few connections as possible. Already includes Leaderboards, daily challenges and multiplayer. Sure to be a hit at future Wikidata events.
Tool of the week
- wikivibes is a tool by Magnus Magnus that play public domain music from Commons, tracked by Wikidata
Other Noteworthy Stuff
- Jobs:
Newest properties and property proposals to review
- Newest properties:
- General datatypes: none
- about page URL (URL to the official about page)
- External identifiers: Western Orthodox Wiki ID, Steady publication ID, Open Collective ID, Guide du Rôliste Galactique ID, CNUC code, Centre for Computing History exhibit reference ID, Braunschweiger ProfKat ID, CNR-IRIS author ID, Anobii Book ID, Anobii author ID, TuneCore Japan artist ID, TakaWiki numeric page ID, Norton Simon Museum object ID, Guide Japan Person ID, CD Journal artist ID
- General datatypes: none
- New property proposals to review:
- General datatypes:
- autoptic examination (time of last direct examination of the inscribed object)
- Tabular data series (A tabular data series in Commons that models the given concept)
- data series (A data series about the given topic.)
- incumbent before dissolution (entity incumbent in a position before its dissolution for an election)
- former operator (entity, company, military service, or organisation which is notable for previously operated the item, aircraft, vehicle, or other equipment)
- número de la plaza (square number)
- External identifiers: PISAI ID, Ko-fi page ID, Scent Base brand ID, Etsy shop name, Overcast podcast ID, Grillplatser.nu ID, Criticker Film ID, HAND ID, Open Language Archives Community language code, identifiant Ciel d'oc d'une publication, ODiD ID, Generic/Numero de Registre Tributari, UntitledDb People ID, MissEvan drama ID, MissEvan sound ID, MissEvan ID, MissEvan voice actor ID, Fmfenxiang FM ID, Fmfenxiang sound ID, Fmfenxiang seiyuu ID
- General datatypes:
You can comment on all open property proposals!
Development
- Wikidata Query Service: We are working on adapting the Query Service UI to get it ready for the move to QLever
- Mobile editing of statements: We are continuing to fix small issues found in testing
- Lexemes: We are continuing the work on adding support for Lexemes to the REST API
- Sustainability:
- We are preparing the migration of some database tables on the client wikis that track the usage of Wikidata's data in articles on Wikipedia and co
- We are further investigating how many changes from Wikidata that currently get sent to Wikipedia and co don't actually lead to a change in the article to be able to reduce these cases further
You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.
Weekly Tasks
- Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
- Contribute to the showcase Item and Lexeme above.
- Govdirectory weekly focus country:
- Summarize your WikiProject's ongoing activities in one or two sentences.
- Help translate or proofread the interface and documentation pages, in your own language!
- Help merge identical items across Wikimedia projects.
- Help write the next summary!
Tech News: 2026-30
editLatest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- The Reader Experience team has incorporated community feedback around the placement of watchstar and watchlist buttons for the Reading Lists beta feature, which would allow for saving articles for later reading – a wishlist item to bring the functionality to web. Editors are invited to enable the beta feature to test it out and share their thoughts.
- Suggestion Mode offers edit suggestions within the VisualEditor for improving Wikipedia articles. All suggestions are community-configurable. The TextMatch feature is a way for volunteers to create custom local suggestions. The feature searches in articles for strings of text, and now includes support for regular expressions. This gives volunteers greater precision and flexibility over the kinds of local suggestions they can create. Note: Suggestions can be targeted based on the edit count of the person editing as well as other aspects of the page. You can find examples from other communities for inspiration, including TextMatches that detect: typos, grammar-errors, potential advertisements, clichés, incorrect dash or hyphen usage, non-specific time keywords, outdated names, and more. Any feedback is appreciated.
- View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the SVG Translate tool could use an outdated version of a file, causing existing translations to be overwritten when new ones were uploaded, has now been fixed. Overall, in the last quarter from April – June 2026 about 337 community tasks were resolved by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Updates for technical contributors
- On Parsoid-enabled wikis, Parsoid now renders a maximum of 1,250 images per page. A new tracking category, "media-limit-reached", will be soon made available to identify pages where this limit is reached, making it easier to find content whose media output may have been restricted during rendering. See phab:T430854 for more information and to provide feedback.
- Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.